Westeros is Poorly Designed

Aside from being a migration nerd, I’m also a general-purpose nerd nerd, and a hobbyist world-builder. Yes, hobbyist world-building is a thing. But because I’m both kinds of nerd here, I’m the guy who reads Lord of the Rings and is perpetually bothered by the ridiculous economic models being presented. Like, really? Everything between the Shire and Rohan is depopulated save for a few ruins here and there? Did the land just up and stop yielding harvests or something? Sure. Okay. That’s some plausible economic geography.

But in most cases, the obvious demographic and economic illiteracy of an author is totally forgivable because they’re not making any claims to realism. I don’t trouble over the absurdly small scale of warfare in Star Wars compared to the size of the galactic population and economy because, um, if I wanted realism I wouldn’t be watching Star Wars.

There is an exception to my forgiveness: Game of Thrones, or, if you prefer, A Song of Ice and Fire. This setting is often held up for its “gritty realism.” Now of course there is magic at work here; you don’t get dragons and a gazillion-foot-tall wall of ice without some kind of breach of realism. And I’m fine with all of that.

But what I’m not fine with is the ridiculous demographic illiteracy of Westeros.

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La la la la la la la la la la la I don’t care I’m enjoying it too much don’t talk to me about realism Varys got from Meereen to Dorne and back again in two days but so what and all the armies seem to have lots of guys with lots of swords and stuff that Stone says they just wouldn’t have that much of or as many guys anyway but I don’t care because it’s fun and it looks great on TV damnit.Report

Yes, of course it’s poorly designed. I doubt Martin ever considered the full implictions when he laid it out. Hell, the entire dynamic of the irregular winter/summer cycle alone is brain melting. What kind of ecology would be needed to deal with a potentially decades long winter? Westeros shouldn’t be medieval, it should be flat out alien.

My theory on that is that “Winter” isn’t so much a season as the ramification of a periodic climate shifts. So “the winter” lasts years, and actually has summers within it (and maybe vice-versa), it’s just that the summers are cold. They’ve sort of incorporated this into their terminology.

That was how I made sense of it.

Most of the problems that Lyman describes can be handled by assuming that some of the measurements got lost in translation. Westeros is actually a size somewhere in between Great Britain and Baffin Island.Report

Yes, I agree. On reading the entire article I shrugged and was like “Okay so most of the nerd protests fizzle if you just assume it’s smaller”. Considering how the characters bounce around that makes more sense as well.Report

So “the winter” lasts years, and actually has summers within it (and maybe vice-versa), it’s just that the summers are cold.

But then you’ve got periodic crop failures and resulting famines. We have instances within recorded history. 1816, popularly known as “The Year Without a Summer”. Widespread crop failures. We know that in parts of North America, grain prices increased five-fold relative to a year earlier. Or the portion of The Little Ice Age in the early 1300s, which produced the Great Famine of 1315-17. Historians put the urban death toll in Europe north of the Alps in the 10-25% range.Report

But, if the North is really Scotland, then people to its south are justified in caring a great deal about it. Plenty of people, plenty of economic activity. And tolerating an autonomous king up there turns out to be risky, especially if that king gets support and alliances with other powers located to the south or just across a narrow sea.Report

If you’re going to try to draw analogues out of European history and/or geography, a better model might be the Viking Age. Sustained warmer climate — the Medieval Warm Period — made grain farming much more productive, the population boomed, population pressure led to expansion (and conflict). If there were a long-term climate cycle a la Will, people to the south will have experienced a periodic expansionary North, which collapses when the climate cycle turns.Report

Right. So my thought is that if you’re the Lannisters, you basically focus almost all of your attention outside the North. The North isn’t going to be worth having for some time. Let the North suffer through the Winter, and then as the weather starts to let up, invade their starving, untrained arses. Then you get the North back and have a better chance on holding it. Who really wants it in the meantime? It’s basically the North of the Wall without the supernatural activity.

Or, uhhh… with the supernatural activity depending on how other plotlines go. Can the undead traverse water?

(As an aside, I’m a bit confused about something from the last episode. What was with Benjen not being able to go south? If he can’t go south, how can the White Walkers? Did that whole thing get resolved with a plot revelation? Haha, just kidding, no White Walkers.)Report

There’s the whole Horn of Winter sub-sub-plot. Was it found, was it burned, was it real, was if fake is it still out there? Probably now part of Bran’s plot.

Personally I think Martin’s real objective was to create a subversive theology…but he’s so lost the plot on that he can’t wind his way back – at least not in a way that will rival the nuance of his political work. So, when the final answer comes regarding the White Walkers, the Lord of Light, the Old Gods, the Faceless One, and the Seven, it will either be terribly disappointing, or the biggest Deus Ex trope you’ve ever seen.Report

Westeros is clearly not similar to North Africa though. The climate, beyond the funky seasonsal issues, is clearly temperate zone and wet.

The primary issue with Westeros is it is clearly meant to be Britan scaled up. The thing is many things about human geography are scale dependant. The forces change with size, so the morphology has to change to reflect that (much like an ant can’t scale up to the size of even a mouse, let alone an elephant)Report

While that is true, I kind of object to the disuse of the Chinese (or Japanese) as a metaphor in the cited article.

What made China (or Japan) so different from India or Europe? Hey, let’s play the muslim angle if we want to get the nice language — doesn’t nearly everyone who’s muslim learn arabic? (granted, then you have more of a “everyone knows english in india” paradigm).Report

China isn’t different. There are a number of different dialects that are not mutually intelligible. As for Arabic, despite all of the dialects being called Arabic, the North African, Gulf, Levant, etc. are all very different from each other and all quite different from MSA. The difference between Algerian Arabic and Iraqi Arabic are as wide as Portuguese and Italian. And MSA largely only exists in a unitary form because it is a literary language (similar to Latin in medieval times) and modern communication and transportation makes it easier to keep largely unitary.Report

Mo, China is a hell of a lot different from Britain — yes, you do have mutually unintelligible dialects, but they cover a LOT of ground. Britain, from one village to the next might be difficult to understand (this is pretty much a Britain thing, it wasn’t true anywhere else — Britain had a hell of a lot of asocial people there, including the elves).

So, I guess what we’re getting is “the more trade you’ve got, the more you develop good trading languages, ” with a side of “literary languages occupy their own world”Report

Anyway, it always seemed preposterously implausible and silly that Westeros should be that large, given that he was going for a War of the Roses analog. Great Britain is small. Why should Westeros not be small?

Anyway, @burt-likko is correct. Who cares, so long as you are enjoying the drama.

But nerds shall nerd nerdily. And nerding out is fun. And there is a texture to realism, that — when you “see the strings” it diminishes the thing. It’s like, watching a thing where everything is slightly the wrong color. You can see it is “off.”

Have sympathy on R.R. Martin my dear. You must have had that game master or been that game master? A wall of ice stretching across a narrow part of a country the size of Britain? That’s cool sure but a wall stretching across North America? That’s super cool! Lord (Lady?) knows I have been that Game Master.

Martin couldn’t have known how popular his world was going to become (for one thing I don’t think he had the ego to think as much). I mean Martin was just building himself a sandbox to write some medieval fantasy intrigue stories in.Report

Honestly though, I wasn’t that game master, at least not anytime after middle school.

I’m not slagging GRRM. I like his books fine. But still, I always shot for the subtle, the “small stories,” rather than the big globe-spanning things.

I hit my sweet spot with early Ars Magica. It was “low key” in a certain way. We generally used the British Isles as our setting, just cuz I had a lot of good gaming material for that time-and-place. We’d pick a bit part of Devonshire (or whatever). Set up a “Covenant” (which was kinda of a wizards community), always located in an out-of-the-way place — cuz they had to fly beneath the radar of the church.

Of course, maybe the local priest knew about them and was cool. It was complicated. You could have rich particulars instead of overbearing everthings.

We seldom involved the affairs of kings. But the local baron, he would play a role.

Plus there were other wizards in other covenants, but small number, and whatever fairy politics was going down, and whatever else I dreamed up. But always local.

It was a fun way to do things. To us it felt real.

After all, how do you now there weren’t small hidden communities of wizards in 12th century England? It ain’t like they would go out of their way to get noticed.

Anyway, as they developed the setting in the published material, things got “big” — big organizations of wizards playing bigger roles in the politics of kingdoms and Christendom. I get it. Some people think in those terms.

Well you were wise beyond your years then. I look back on some of the stuff I wrote and invented during my “Big is cool!” years and cringe. Thank God(ess?) the internet was too nascent for me to have put it up somewhere where people could see it.Report

Well I mean, when I was a teen I tried to write a terribly long and sprawling Silmarillion ripoff with giant elf armies and demon hoards, so I’m not immune.

It’s just — I dunno.

Honestly — not to throw out a hand grenade — but I think it was a gender thing. (#notallmen, #notallwomen, #notallenbies, etc.) It’s like, all the “big stories” were dudely things, and it was — just that stuff felt unsatisfying. By that time I was discovering “girl books,” and they tended to be the “small stories” stuff —

— which look, I don’t know if this is “baked into the brain” or “socialization” or “veronica making up bullshit theories.”

Whatever. Something something blah blah. It’s just feels “gendery” to me. Two of my most loyal players were — unknown to any of us at the time — transgender. Like, a gaming group of five folks, and three of us are in-the-closet trans folks, who somehow accidentally end up friends.

Gender gender gender.

(One of them was a trans man — like we thought he was a girl but he wasn’t. This means whatever it means. He married the other trans gal, cuz of course. They both came out and transitioned after they married, cuz of course.)

Being much more a Tolkien geek than a Martin geek, I will go after this:

Everything between the Shire and Rohan is depopulated save for a few ruins here and there? Did the land just up and stop yielding harvests or something? Sure. Okay. That’s some plausible economic geography.

Plausible economic geography is Missing The Point. This is mythic geography. Arnor is without a king. The fertility of the land is tied to this. No king, no fertility. QED. I don’t recall Tolkien explicitly making the connection, but this is bog standard stuff.Report

heheh. This is the just sort of thing that a friend of mine doesn’t get. He often says he doesn’t get abstractions and metaphors. I say he just doesn’t get illogical ones. Ya know, like the idea that because it’s raining outside, the house is going to be troubled inside.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.